Some people shouldn’t be allowed to follow their dreams

Case in point: the weaver in Woodstock, NY who chose to call their studio Loominous.

 

The Emily Post of our times

Lately I’ve been a little unnerved by how relevant someecards.com is to my life. There’s this:

followed by this:

and of course:

Let’s not forget:

I wish someone had shown the courtesy of sending this:

so I could have had the pleasure of responding like this:

PS:

 

Decision 2008

(click to view full size)

I have to pick tomorrow.

 

I ain’t got no plan . . .

At last, this has become the kind of blog that reprints song lyrics. It was inevitable, really.

This song has been stuck in my head for the past few weeks, for reasons I assume are obvious.

Ice age heat wave, can’t complain.
If the world’s at large, why should I remain?
Walked away to another plan.
Gonna find another place, maybe one I can stand.
I move on to another day, to a whole new town with a whole new way.
Went to the porch to have a thought.
Got to the door and again, I couldn’t stop.
You don’t know where and you don’t know when.
But you still got your words and you got your friends.
Walk along to another day, work a little harder, work another way.

Well uh-uh baby I ain’t got no plan.
We’ll float on maybe would you understand?
Gonna float on maybe would you understand?
Well I’ll float on maybe would you understand?

The days get shorter and the nights get cold.
I like the autumn but this place is getting old.
I pack up my belongings and I head for the coast.
It might not be a lot but I feel like I’m making the most.
The days get longer and the nights smell green.
I guess it’s not surprising but it’s spring and I should leave.

I like songs about drifters, books about the same.
They both seem to make me feel a little less insane.
Walked on off to another spot.
I still haven’t got anywhere that I want.
Did I want love? Did I need to know?
Why does it always feel like I’m caught in an undertow?

The moths beat themselves to death against the lights.
Adding their breeze to the summer nights.
Outside, water like air was great.
I didn’t know what I had that day.
Walk a little farther to another plan.
You said that you did, but you didn’t understand.

I know that starting over is not what life’s all about.
But my thoughts were so loud, I couldn’t hear my mouth.
My thoughts were so loud, I couldn’t hear my mouth.
My thoughts were so loud.

 

Then again . . .

I take it back; despite what I said last week, sometimes I still do NOT love it here. One of those times was last Sunday, when the letter below ran in the Weekend Edition of the Press (click to enlarge).

 

In Which I Obliquely Reference Britney Spears

I was walking to the bus stop with Maurice today when I felt a familiar pain in my left hip. For a few months now, it has been clicking intermittently when I walk. Also, it gets really sore if I stay in one position for a long time, like first thing in the mornings, or after a road trip, or while watching a movie. But me being me (“I can still walk! It’s just because I am doing so much more exercise. It doesn’t really hurt. I’m getting older; these aches and pains start to happen. It will probably go away. ” etc.), I haven’t done anything about it. Yeah, I sort of never learn.

But today I decided to Take Steps, the first being: Get a Second Opinion. I grabbed Maurice’s hand and hiked down my pants on the left side. We were still walking down the busiest street in Christchurch, by the way.

He recoiled.
“What are you doing?” he hissed.
“Here, feel this,” I said, pulling his hand towards my now-exposed hipbone.
“Uh, can’t we do this later? At home, maybe?” he said, eyes darting around.
“Oh, well, I guess I really don’t need to pull down my pants. Lemme have your hand.” I adjusted my waistband and continued walking as I placed his hand over my hip socket. “Can you fe–”
He pulled back like I had plunged his hand into three-week old egg salad or something.
“YES. You should get that checked out. Jesus, Ruth, how long has it been doing that?”
“Um, I don’t know. . . a few months, maybe? Off and on?”
“Did you do something to it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Not really. Well, yeah, a little. Especially when I get up in the mornings, and um, some other times too.”
“I really think you should go to the doctor.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Something is rubbing away in there. Get it looked at.”

I know he’s right. Why have I not reached this conclusion before? Because I am a glutton for punishment, because for some reason I feel I deserve all this pain, that it’s my job or something to put up with it? Paging a decent therapist! But anyway, I think about going to the doctor, and then a specialist, and a physio, and the dollar signs flash through my head complete with accompanying ka-chinnngg!! sound effects. Sorry to LiveJournal again, internets, but especially in the light of the earlier events of this week, can a girl catch a break? Can just one thing go right, for a change? If the universe could bestow on me a sign, a sign that I should keep trying, I would be so grateful. Especially if that sign came in the form of cold, hard cash.

 

Only in New Zealand. . .

. . . where the social welfare net is so widely cast and tightly knit, and where the world’s oldest profession is decriminalized, could a prostitute claim compensation for a work-related injury when the car in which she is servicing her client crashes.

Um, good on her?

 

Oh My God.

As of yesterday, I have officially been in New Zealand for one year.

I was going to write a very thoughtful post about the good, the bad, the things learned, the things apparently unlearnable. Perhaps I will still do that on Monday. In the meantime, one thing I have learned from a year of heavy reliance on DVDs for entertainment (coincidental? certainly not!) is that re-watching Arrested Development is way better than watching 24.

 

Protected: Things of Which I Have Had Enough

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Is it so wrong. . .

that this, which has been posted on the bus for the last four months

makes me think of this?

(from toothpaste for dinner)